How 'bout you Jimmie, you an oak man?

August 2005

08/31/2005

. . . I suggest that you do not read this Washington Post story. Exceptionally bleak.

BTW just curious-- how much is gas now where you live? D.C shot past $3 today for all fuels at most stations, with premium up to $3.24 at a few stations.

What's so funny is that local prices moved up so fast that they have yet to equalize. I saw one station today charging $3.05 for the cheap gas-- meanwhile the Sunoco right across the street was still charging $2.89. Something tells me that first gas station didn't make a dime today. Alas, won't last, though-- I expect everybody will be up, up, up in price by tomorrow. Good thing I filled up this past weekend.

You know what really worries me, however? What's the price for *natural gas* going to be soon? I fear that this winter's heating bills are going to make today's gasoline gouging look like rounding errors.

Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain is based on an Annie Proulx novel and written for the screen by Western writer Larry McMurtry. It stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

As gay cowboys.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I saw the full trailer tonight in front of The Constant Gardener (they're both Focus Features releases). I wish it was online somewhere, because if you saw it, you'd realize, it's a movie about gay cowboys.

Am I hopelessly politically incorrect for laughing about this?

I mean, I know there are gay people. I know that there are cowboys. I also know that, inevitably, there are gay cowboys-- real ones, not the gay men who pretend to be cowboys.

Call it the curse of John Le Carre stories, but there's no real suspense in the film. The law of character economy makes it obvious early who the bad guy(s) are. Meanwhile, the patented Le Carre cynicism about, well, everything pretty much steers the twists and turns in the plot towards predictable results.

Ebert gives a 4-star review to The Constant Gardener, listing reason after reason why the film is so good. However, he also spoils what few hidden twists there are in the film, so he's a big fat (thin, now) jerk.

Also, the politics of the film ring dubious. It's one thing for a drug company to cover up mistakes-- we see that a lot lately-- it's another thing entirely to make the leap towards intentional abuse for profit. Absent supporting evidence from the real world, The Constant Gardener traffics in conspiracies that, while a useful McGuffin for a movie thriller, will inevitably leave audiences with a skewed view of the world. After all, the bad guys in this movie aren't from a specific drug company, although there is one-- instead, it's *all* drug companies, and *all* Western governments, determined to make cash off the backs of Africa's poor. I would be naive to suggest that isn't often the case, but the filmmakers are reckless in hammering home that this is always the case. And they make sure not to stop until there's a good chance every white person in the audience feels guilty for treating Africans as test subjects, whether or not that is truly the case.

If we accept the drug conspiracy as a McGuffin, however, we're left with a really good drama and love story. Ralph Fiennes low-level British diplomat begins the movie as a man who's barely there, someone you'd meet at a cocktail party and forget their name before you finish chewing your first stuffed mushroom. We see him meet Rachel Weisz at a lecture where Weisz flips out all moonbatty about the war in Iraq. To the film's credit, it's clear that Fiennes doesn't agree with her, but he senses something admirable in her determination to be heard, and quickly (VERY quickly) falls in some sort of love with her.

I don't really get what Weisz's character sees in Fiennes', either than gentleness and acceptance. To put it lightly, he's a pushover wimp. Still, the movie makes them out to be in love, at least with the idea of being in love, even if neither understands the other. After Weisz is killed (early in the non-linear film, no spoiler there), Fiennes searches less for clues to the conspiracy than for clues to who the woman he loved really was, what she was when he wasn't looking or she wasn't sharing. It's good stuff.

I recommend The Constant Gardener. It's a very adult, very mature film aided by terrific acting across the board. The story is far too one-dimensional to support a nailbiting thriller, but that doesn't really matter given the rest of the film's strengths.

---An observation, and a question: What is the deal with slums and trash? The Constant Gardener repeatedly shows scenes from African slums with trash strewn about, or more frequently, clogging the water supply. I know this just isn't Hollywood at work, I've seen pictures from real-life slums and shantytowns.

What I don't understand is why there aren't landfills? These people are poor, but they're not starving; they can dig holes, can't they? Rather than provide endless bags of flour, can't the United Nations provide shovels? Or even an earthmover?

Likewise, how hard is it to keep water clean in these areas? Man invented irrigation and plumbing 5,000 years ago-- are you telling me refugees in Brazil or the Congo can't dig a proper trench? A child out of the womb knows enough not to wallow in their own filth, let alone drink from it. Is there some cultural reason why conditions are like this? If so, how come it's so universal?

Hey, I understand pollution and litter-- America used to toss a lot of trash out the car window in our day. But nobody's drinking water from the ditch by the side of the highway.

Anyway, I sure would love a good obvious reason why this is so commonplace. It appears to me that if relief agencies teach people anything at all, it should be the basics of human hygiene.

08/30/2005

LONDON - Aaron Balick expected to find a tiny mouse rustling behind the TV in his apartment. Instead, he found a venomous giant centipede that somehow hitched a ride from South America to Britain.

"Thinking it was a mouse, I went to investigate the sound. The sound was coming from under some papers which I lifted, expecting to see the mouse scamper away," the 32-year-old psychotherapist said Wednesday. "Instead, when I lifted the papers, I saw this prehistoric looking animal skitter away behind a stack of books."

I'm sorry, but if I found that centipede in my house, I would walk out the door immediately and never return. The County can have my house for all I care.

I wrote this post on Sunday and this post on Monday critiquing Andrew Krepinevich's "Oil Spot" strategy for Iraq.

Well, it seems like today is "Rich Lowry discovers what I already knew, only discovers it from every other blogger out there but me" day over at National Review Online. At least Lowry has the good sense to quote Jason Van Steenwyk. Anyway, see here, here, here, and here. Oh, and definitely see here:

To his great credit, Krepinevich has been a real visionary of the lighter, more lethal, more agile force that won the war in Iraq. Now, he seeks to balance the overmatch by arguing—and arguing correctly—for boots on the ground to win the peace (however delayed by our poor choices since "Mission accomplished").

But here is where Brooks shows his ignorance of military matters to a stunning degree: describing Krepinevich's `new’ thinking as the opposite of Rumsfeld's transformed force vision. First, Krepinevich was one of the great godfathers of this approach, and two, how we win wars is not the same as how we win the peace in the 21st century. Wars have become faster, easier, cheaper, and that means the peace becomes slower, harder, more costly.

Two realities requiring two forces. Brooks doesn't get that yet, and thus he foolishly presents Krepinevich as Rumsfeld's doctrinal opposite. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are identical twins when it comes to war, and frankly, they're close to being cousins on the question of the peace. It's just that Bush and Rumsfeld can't admit how much they screwed up the coalition-building in the run-up to the war.

Of course, I pointed out the ironies of Krepinevich's transformational bonafides the other day. Then again, Thomas Barnett posted his observation a day before mine, so perhaps I stole from him?

Never mind that I took Krep's Net Assessment course back in 1997 (B+; what can I say, I hate buzzwords), where he was talking this stuff up then. Or that I've read most of his policy papers talking about the ever-emerging Revolution in Military Affairs, both at home and for work. Or that I once dated one of his analysts, and had to spend hours on the phone with her as she edited his papers, asking me for yet another synonym for the word "metrics." Nope, I have no insight at all into this guy's arguments.

For years New Orleans has issued dire warnings about the unique threat a powerful hurricane posed to the city; with floods inundating 80 percent of the Crescent City yesterday, it is clear that those warnings were not hyperbole. Characteristically compassionate in times of crisis, the nation is rushing aid to the storm-damaged area. President Bush, who has maintained his weeks-long holiday schedule without regard to the bloodshed in Iraq, is breaking off his summer idyll two days early to tend to the fallout from Katrina. The American Red Cross has mobilized thousands of volunteers for the hurricane -- the largest single mobilization undertaken in the organization's history for any natural disaster, its spokesman said. All that will be desperately needed, particularly in a part of the country where poverty and poor social services were endemic even before Katrina came smashing ashore.

Gee, thanks for slipping that bit in there, guys. As if that has anything to do with the story you're writing about!

Hey, here's a suggestion: why invent a new anti-Bush non-sequitur when a classic one will do just fine?

"Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on August 28, 2005, 851 days since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq."

I know that the in-home appraisal is a simple in-and-out job, and the "real" work involves analyzing comparable sales.Yet, even I can't fathom how anyone can judge a house's essential structure in less than five minutes.

I'm not kidding you-- my appraiser walked through my door at 12:19, and was out at 12:25. Okay, fine, *six* minutes. Still, it's gotta be a scam.

Oh well, fingers crossed. I'm not too worried, but I can't help but be at least a little bit anxious until I hear the final word.

I did, however, get one dynamite piece of news this afternoon. After I came home to wait for the appraiser, I spoke with one of the foremen working on the endless apartment renovation next door. You remember this job-- it's been going on for over two years now; hell, they built the Pentagon in less time.

Anyway, he asked me about the rusted chain-link fence between our properties, and told me that the apartment owner wants to put up a wrought-iron fence in its place. Immediately, thoughts of money start flashing before my eyes, as I knew I had to replace the fence-- getting cash for that work is one of the reasons I'm refinancing, after all-- but I didn't want to spend quite that much money on it.

Well, guess what? Turns out that the apartment building owns the fence, not I! I was of course going to confirm that before I started work on the fence myself, but I was always under the impression that I owned the fence (90% sure at least, given how fence ownership on my block alternates between properties).

So, I just saved money on replacing the fence, AND I'm going to end up with a nicer fence than I was willing to buy in the process.

Hey, I know that it's not quite getting a rubdown from a supermodel, but at this point in my life, I'll take what good news I can get.

That's what Maureen Dowd writes in today's New York Times while simultaneously fawning over and pooh-pooh'ing Hillary!

Plus she sneaks in a plug for the upcoming "Geena Davis is the President of the United States" cancellation-waiting-to-happen. Or, as the Corner folks like to call it, The Ovular Office, or The Breast Wing (I'm still not sure which I like I better, so I leave it up to you).

Anyway, returning to the redhead quote, after years of intimate personal experience with our Freckled-Americans, I call bullpuckey. I don't know if redheads have a higher tolerance for pain, but I damn well do know that redheads have a higher tolerance for *inflicting* pain.

They're all evil, man. EVIL!

H/T to the Corner. Blame them for making me link to MoDo, but how could I resist when Kathryn Jean Lopez makes this joke?